Marie Claude:
You ironically prove my point. In the late nineteenth century, the United States was clearly within the cultural orbit of France. By 1968, political factions in France were struggling to keep France out of America’s cultural orbit. The rise of America’s apparent cultural power in the twentieth century should be seen as a side effect of the decline, fall, and eventual death of western civilization, particularly the cultural power of France.
In the early twentieth century, American music shifted from imitating French fashion to imitating the fashions of American black people. Let’s face it. I may be fond of Jean Michel Jarre and Asterix, but I am a minority in North America and even Europe.
1898 is a major year for French history and American history. The Hearst newspaper chain pushed the United States into a war against Spain. The principal reaction in France wasn’t a celebration of any presumed justice in America’s war declaration against Spain or any admiration for America’s version of “mission civilatrice”, but rather a revulsion against crass American imperialism. Yet, the most important event affecting France was the Dreyfus Affair.
The Dreyfus Affair was important because it led to the rise of Charles Maurras and his ideal of “integral nationalism” in France. “Integral nationalism” sapped France’s cultural confidence, its ability to absorb foreign ideas and make them French, and France’s ability to use its cultural power to its own advantage. French culture became increasingly brittle and unable to assimilate the ideas of Salvador Dali or the wave of Jewish refugees from Nazi Germany. Jewish physicists enriched America with nuclear technology during World War II; imagine what France could have done if it had attracted them instead!
The anti-Americanism of Action Française in the 1930’s is important because it provided a strong ideological template for anti-Americanism from the French Left after World War II. In the post-war period, anti-Americanism was a highly effective way for former members of Action Française to burnish their “leftist” credentials without changing one iota of their worldview. Yes, French Communists were anti-American after 1944 because they were loyal to the International. And yes, there were differences between the United States and France when France expected American help in reconquering the French Empire. Yet, French anti-Americanism should be seen less as a reaction against American power and more as both a reflection and cause of French powerlessness.
France’s inability to withstand Germany’s offensive in 1940 was primarily due to its lack of strategic depth. If I remember correctly, France had a bigger, stronger, and better equipped military than the United States in 1939. Yet, France lacked the strategic depth of the United States, the Soviet Union, and even the United Kingdom. Charles de Gaulle understood very well that France had very little margin for error.
The collapse of western civilization mirrors the decline of French cultural confidence. As late as the early twentieth century, rich Americans made a pilgrimage to worship at the altar of French cultural brilliance. American philanthropists would regard it as their patriotic duty as Americans to bring art to the United States, and by “art” they meant French art. When Wilbur and Orville Wright showed the world the worthiness of their airplane in 1908, they went to France.
Although France may eventually regain its cultural confidence, the damage of the twentieth century has been done. Although western civilization is gone, something can be created in its place. The question is not whether a new civilization can rise from the ashes of the old, but whether the people of France desire to be an integral part of a new civilization.
Is New Orleans jazz part of French civilization? Is even Quebecois French part of French civilization? There was a time when it was France that was the melting pot of the best of the civilized world. That time may come again. The question is whether France will seize the opportunity.
